Illustration I was recently watching a TV show with my 4-year-old and, at one point, an item begins to ring. The main character picks up the top part, connected to the bottom part with a curly wire and speaks into it. On the main, bottom part, there is a circle with numbers, almost like a…
Recently as I read the first 8 verses of Psalm 145, I found myself oddly enough wondering what is the antecedent for all the “they” references in especially verses 4-7. On the one level it is almost certainly the case that the “they” refers back to the next generation. One generation commends God’s works to…
The first half dozen verses of Psalm 103 are familiar to some of us because a lot of churches use those words as the words of Thanksgiving following a celebration of the Lord’s Supper. At our church, the pastor reads the words and the congregation then echoes them. They are such fitting words following…
Illustration The story of the exodus is a potent motif for shaping the story of oppressed people. In the US context, we know this from the way the story was used in songs written by enslaved people. “Go down Moses and tell old Pharaoh, ‘let my people go.’” Harriet Tubman, who famously led hundreds to…
A few weeks back, for the last Sunday in July, the RCL took us to a snippet of Psalm 119 (verses 129-136), and now here we are again – but this time verses 33-40. So to review all the basics: Psalm 119 is the longest of all the psalms clocking in at 176 verses. Those…
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